An Animal House musical with music by the Barenaked Ladies. …Wait, what?

Yep, an Animal House musical. That’s happening. And it was announced on the 30th anniversary of John Belushi’s death (today). I’ll tell you what, it’s really hard to inject a speedball with jazz hands.

Universal Pictures Stage Productions said Monday that it’s developing a stage musical based on its classic college comedy “National Lampoon’s Animal House.”
“Animal House: The Musical” will feature an original score by the band Barenaked Ladies, with direction and choreography by Tony Award winner Casey Nicholaw, who also directed “The Book of Mormon” and “The Drowsy Chaperone.”
Michael Mitnick will write the libretto for the stage production.
The 1978 film’s cast included John Belushi, Tom Hulce, Bruce McGill, Tim Matheson, Stephen Furst and Karen Allen. It explored how one frat house, Delta Tau Chi, made sloth and debauchery look cool. [AP]

Does anyone else get the feeling they chose Barenaked Ladies for the name only, without having listened to any of their songs? “It’s been, one week since she looked at me. Shot cocaine in my veins, and said I’m sorry.” (I’m so sorry for that). As for the style of the music for the songs in the play, my guess? Otter pop. (Again, very, very sorry).

Meanwhile, Penny Marshall reminisced about Belushi for a short piece in the Hollywood Reporter:

An intravenous “speedball” of cocaine and heroin killed him at age 33. Robin Williams and Robert De Niro had been with him at the hotel — though both had left earlier — during an all-night binge by Belushi that began at The Roxy on the Sunset Strip. Penny Marshall, who had known Belushi since his pre-Saturday Night Live days, says his death was “devastating.” They met in 1973 after she saw him in the stage show National Lampoon’s Lemmings in New York. “I thought he was funny, and [then-husband] Rob Reiner and I went to dinner with him after the show,” Marshall tells THR. “Rob and John must have done Marlon Brando impersonations for two hours straight.”

As for Belushi’s drug use, Marshall says: “I swear, you’d walk down the street with him, and people would hand him drugs. And then he’d do all of them — be the kind of character he played in sketches or Animal House.” [THR]

That sounds like a much more interesting play than a stage remake of Animal House with cheesy dancing and fruity songs. The only way an Animal House musical could be good is if five minutes in, a guy dressed as Bluto walked into the orchestra pit and smashed the cello.

I miss the days when The Barenaked Ladies seemed like a weird inside joke to all of us in Canada (that none of us really got, but were too polite to say anything about). The first time I realized anyone else in the world had heard of them I remember stopping and thinking ‘Wait, people actually like this shit?”

I’m sure somewhere in Hollywood, following a comment of John Belushi rising from the grave to put an end to this sort of garbage, his brother Jim has just said (with a serious expression and a briefcase full of money) “That’s why we buried him upside down”